On January 17, 2022, the Italian Senate hosted a Zoom meeting about the Transparent Public Service. Just when Nobel Prize-winning physicist Giorgio Parisi was about to be introduced, a user named Alex Spence “zoombombed” the meeting with at least 30 seconds of a CG pornographic video featuring Tifa Lockhart that was originally made by Patreon user JuicyNeko.

The news spread mere days after the incident, and Tifa became the subject of memes that associated her with Italy, including being considered an Italian video game mascot that’s on par with Mario.

In the early development stages, producer Tetsuya Nomura planned to have only three playable characters in the entire game. However, during a phone call with Yoshinori Kitase, they decided that one of the three characters should be permanently killed off. After the staff chose Aerith, Nomura created Tifa as another possible love interest for Cloud.

In an interview, Tetsuya Nomura stated that he envisioned Cloud and Sephiroth's relationship to be like that of Musashi Miyamoto and Sasaki Kojiro. This influenced not only their appearances, but also the appearances of their swords.

"For me, it’s of course Cloud and Sephiroth. My concept for Sephiroth from the beginning was that everything about him would be kakkoii. His battle movements, and all his in-game scenes too. My image of the relationship between Cloud AND Sephiroth was that of Musashi Miyamoto and Sasaki Kojiro, and I had them in mind when I designed their appearance, as well as their swords. Of course Cloud is Musashi, and Sephiroth is Kojiro."

One of the advertisements for the game reads "Someone please get the guys who make cartridge games a cigarette and a blindfold." and "Good thing, if it were available on cartridge, it'd retail for around $1,200." This was a jab at Nintendo and their cartridge-based platform the Nintendo 64.

During the Motorcycle Chase FMV, Midgar is incorrectly spelled Midgal on the side of the truck door. This is probably because the letters "R" and "L" are commonly mistranslated from Japanese to English.

Final Fantasy VII heavily references the Lurian Kabbalah [kah-ball-a]. Kabbalah is a Jewish school of thought that also refers to the mysticism of Judaism and Gnosticism, a collection of ancient religions. Not only does FFVII draw from the beliefs of these religions, but it incorporates what actually happened to the followers in real life, as well as using Hebrew in the formation of character names. A few examples are:

• The Gnostics were persecuted, like the Cetra.
• Sephiroth's name comes from the term Sefirot (meaning "counting" or "enumeration"), which refers to the ten aspects of God in the Tree of Life.
• The sixth sefira in Tree of Life is beauty, known in Hebrew as Tif'eret {ti-fah-ret}. It is possible that this is how Tifa's name was derived.

The meaning of "Safer Sephiroth", the name of the final boss -- not counting the unloseable battle that follows -- has been the subject of debate. Many assume that it's a mistranslation of "Seraph Sephiroth", as Sephiroth's form bears an explicit resemblance to the six-winged Seraph angels (particularly as depicted in the painting "Stigmatization of St. Francis" by Giotto).

However this is not true, as the Japanese name is romanized as Sēfa Sefirosu. The actual translation is 'Sepher', which is Hebrew for the word Book. Sephiroth's name itself is based on the Hebrew word Səphīrōth, which can be translated as Numbers. The name Sepher Sephiroth can thus be translated as "Book of Numbers", one of the books in the Hebrew Bible.

Cait Sith resembles the Esper "Stray" from Final Fantasy VI, which was also called Cait Sith in the original Japanese version. The name itself comes from Celtic mythology, and means "faerie cat".

During the events of Cloud's flashback to Nibelheim, the player can go into Tifa's house. Tifa isn't home, but the player still has the ability to explore her entire house. If the player interacts with the wardrobe in Tifa's room, they will find a joke item called the "Orthopaedic Underwear." The Tifa listening to the story in the present will scold Cloud for joking whilst he is retelling his story.

The unusually named boss "Bizarro-Sephiroth" was a result of a mistranslation. The boss is actually known as "Rebirth-Sephiroth", but due to the letters "B" and "V" being interchangeable in Japanese and "th" often being translated as "S" (the same issue led to Aerith being known as Aeris), it ended up being translated as "Reverse-Sephiroth."

The translators then replaced the word "Reverse" with "Bizarro", which in the west can be used as a slang term to refer to something that is opposite or backwards. It is derived from the character Bizarro from the Superman comics, who was an imperfect clone of Superman who consciously did things the opposite way they were expected.

Both Ruby and Emerald WEAPON were not in the original Japanese version of the game. They were added later for the international versions of the game.

Cloud's Buster Sword was originally a lot smaller and thinner with only one Materia slot. Tetsuya Nomura's original vision of the Buster Sword was unrefined steel, and he referred to it as "the Giant Kitchen Knife".

The intro to Sephiroth's theme, "One-Winged Angel", was inspired by the intro to the song "Purple Haze" by the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

Due to both Vincent and Yuffie being optional recruits, they do not appear in the game's ending cutscene.

In the 2012 PC re-release, using a Save Crystal in a specific screen of the Northern Cave will display the area name in the menu and save file as "Secret Cow Level". This is a reference to the Secret Cow Level in Diablo II.

The character Zack Fair was created late into development. He was made up along the way as Kazushige Nojima was building up the mysteries surrounding Cloud (most importantly, who he was and who he based his fake cocky personality on). Before Zack was created, Aerith was to see her first love in Cloud, though who that person would be was not yet decided until later, but there were plans to make this person Sephiroth. Eventually, Zack was placed to serve as both Aerith's first love and to solve the mysteries surrounding Cloud. When he was finally developed, Nojima asked the staff in charge of the event scenes to add foreshadowing to Cloud's true persona and to Zack himself. Zack was also the last character to be drawn by Tetsuya Nomura.

When returning to the Sector 5 Church, two different images of Aeris may be seen. One appears for a split second in the center of screen before disappearing, while in the other Aeris is seen tending the flowers before Cloud moves closer. It has been speculated this is meant to be her "ghost".

During the cutscene Spoiler:in which he kills Aeris, Sephiroth's hands are bare as he descends from the ceiling. However, during the rest of the scene, he has black gloves on.

Aeris, after being brought back via a cheat device, has dialogue in discs 2 and 3. This seems to imply that either Spoiler:she was not meant to die at the end of disc 1 or that Spoiler:she was intended to be revived later in the game.

After you find Cloud in the hospital after he falls in the Lifestream, he will mumble incoherent things when you speak to him. One of the things he mumbles is "zeno... gias..." This is a translation error and a reference to the game Xenogears. In the PC port of Final Fantasy VII, the spelling is corrected to "Xeno... gears".

Cloud also says "A billion mirror fragments.... small.... light..." which is a reference to the vocal song of Xenogears, Small Two of Pieces. One of the lines to the song is "Broken mirror, a million shades of light".